Origin

Our term for the camel comes from Greek kamēlos, which itself probably came from an Arabic or Hebrew word. When it was adopted into Old English it replaced the existing word for the animal, olfend. This sounds suspiciously like elephant, and it seems that people often got the two animals confused, not being familiar with either. A further confusion is found in camelopard, an archaic name for a giraffe, from Greek kamelopardalis, from kamēlos ‘camel’ and pardalis ‘female panther or leopard’. People thought that a giraffe's spotted skin looked like that of a leopard. See also chameleon. It was Alec Issigonis, the designer of the Morris Minor and Mini cars, who said that ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’.